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Saturday, February 7, 2009

I'm taking advantage of my obviously worsening ADD symptoms (that seem to have emerged as the school year progresses) to write this note, even though I still have a rediculous amount of reports to finish this week. I can say, however, that thank God my Purchasing presentation assignment is over. That was sheer Hell - no thanks to having to deal with a partner in that venture! Really, is it too much to ask that, after you slave away to put together a detailed report and conclusion, that your partner actually read your material and use it in the simple PowerPoint they create?? Or at least know a little bit about the actual topic when you stand up in front of the class so that we don't look like idiots?? I mean, come on... I know that you may not like public speaking, but that doesn't change reality. Professional life demands it - cope already!

Deep breath, Sarah... in, out... whew. Okay.

Haha... okay, apparently that "breath" I took was actually a 15 minute lapse where I wandered around my house, brushed my teeth, re-pinned my hair and changed into my PJs... I did mention that I swear I have ADD, right?

I think that's probably why I like to bake bread so much... I can throw together the dough in about 15 minutes with my mixer, then cover it up and get all nice and distracted for an hour or so before the handy buzz-timer calls me back. I could actually kill for a timer like this one, maybe then I'd actually get more stuff done in a day!

5 minutes later... Aaand, I'm back again. Sigh. So yes, bread. More specifically, bagels again. I've gotten into the habit of doing a weekly batch for my mom to take to work - she's almost always open to the flavour combinations I come up with, and as a bonus it gives me an outlet for my overabundance of creatinve energy. Funny, thing, that creative energy. It never seems to translate into actual energy! Ah well.

So this week's baking tally actually consisted of three types of bagels, simply because I had a tad bit of extra time on my hands (read: I was avoiding homework!) and a whack of languishing ingredients in my cupboard. Two dozen of the chewy rings were on the fruity side of the spectrum and found their way into my mom's lunchbox. The remaining ten were all for Andrew, though - I know what he likes in terms of bready-ness (or at least I like to think I know what he likes!) so today when we went to see the OHL game I got him tickets for this past Christmas I gave him a bag of Cheddar - Jalapeno bagels. Whenever we went to the Great Canadian Bagel out in Ottawa, that was the type he'd favour, with either Zesty Cheddar or Jalapeno cream cheese spread on it. Me - well, I preferred the good old plain-jane sourdough bagels, but Zesty Cheddar cream cheese all the way!

So, take a look at these first bagels - do they look poppy-seeded? That's what my mom thought too, but those crunchies are way better than poppy seeds! I broke out the chia seed to top these babies, which I thought would be a perfectly nutty compliment to the dough's flavour - banana! The bread part is subtly sweet and fruity, not really "banana bready" but you know that's the fruit inside. My mom topped these with honey all week... but I would bet my bottom dollar that peanut butter (or, to keep with this week's events - Nutella!) would be equaly awesome! I got the maltose at my local Asian grocery, use honey or leave it out if you can't find it or don't want to buy another ingredient!

If you're wondering about these last bagels - they're Strawberry-Kiwi flavoured. I used pureed strawberries (previously frozen from this past summer) and dried kiwi pieces, with some pureed tofu for body, but I didn't measure any of the additions (not to mention the whole flour / liquid ratio is way off - the dough was incredibly sticky) so I can't tell you what I actually did! I'm going to work on this one, though... they did bake rather nicely and had a great flavour!

I'm passing along these bagels to YeastSpotting over at WildYeast - seems to be my new "go-to" event these days!